[bonney_io]

I did this back in 2016, with an iOS app I built/hacked away at while learning/self-teaching Swift and UIKit.

Easily over 1,000 hours (~2 hours ~5x day per week for ~2 years) invested in to the app. I learned so, so much, and fell in love with the Swift language, but that app never saw the light of day.

Instead, I developed skills that have made me a much better programmer. And, fast-forward to the current day, I could effectively re-write the entire app - from scratch - in a weekend, due to the evolution of Apple's platform dev tools and APIs over the last ~7 years + the mountains of Swift code and packages I've hacked and honed away at over the years.

This type of project should be celebrated. Programming is (can be) art. Art can be made just for you, as a creative outlet.

[felipefar]

The more commitments you have in life, the more pressure there is to align your learning projects with money earning activities.

You can't justify to your family, kids and other "stakeholders" that you spent thousands of hours developing apps just for learning new subjects. In the least, you need some kind of successful activity to grow out of it.

Besides, some parts of a software development project do involve learning, but a huge portion is drudgery. Solving edge cases, doing customer support for repetitive issues, solving that last pixel that is not quite right.

Making apps is great, and it's a sign of maturity to have a concern for how well received it will be.

[mcny]

> You can't justify to your family, kids and other "stakeholders" that you spent thousands of hours developing apps just for learning new subjects. In the least, you need some kind of successful activity to grow out of it.

Congratulations, you have explained why we have declining fertility rates. Maybe it is a good thing. Who knows. All I know is I can't afford to have children. Having children who want to go to college / medical school should be a cause for celebration, not a scary thought for parents for one. I will tell anyone and everyone who will listen, don't have kids. It is not worth it. There is no law that requires people to have children. Let the idiots who don't understand this do all the child bearing and child rearing. After all, they lash out at the simplest idea that it takes a village to raise a child.

> solving that last pixel that is not quite right.

The great thing about a personal project like this is you can spend as much or as little time as you want to. This is the ultimate agile team where you are wearing all hats -- a true cross functional team which I believe the word agile prescribes.

> Making apps is great, and it's a sign of maturity to have a concern for how well received it will be.

As someone who puts the "pro" in procastination, I know a sure sign of procastination when I see one. This is not a sign of maturity at all. This is just laziness.

[automatic6131]

>I will tell anyone and everyone who will listen, don't have kids. It is not worth it. There is no law that requires people to have children. Let the idiots who don't understand this do all the child bearing and child rearing

You know you need those kids so you can retire, right? Idk, maybe you want to tap out code forever, but you're going to need farmers and cooks and doctors and plumbers and people to make your iPhone. I guess, everyone else can raise those people though right? Fuck them, they can pay and you can enjoy their children's labour, right?

[klausa]

If you think "we will need more laborers in the future" is a good reason for someone to have kids, please don't have any.

[velcrovan]

You’re right it’s not a good reason for an individual to have kids. but it is a good reason why even childless people should be motivated to be part of a society that invests in people who do raise children.

[mcny]

You left out the last sentence in the paragraph. I don't have children of my own. I get that we are all supposed to be "rugged individualism" in this country but that is just a myth just like the "self-made man".

I think we need fewer people to have children so that we actually begin to value our children not just my children, but also my neighbor's children. Your children are your ward, not your property.

> Fuck them, they can pay and you can enjoy their children's labour, right?

Ah, labour. OK sorry, I guess you are from England or something? I am saying the opposite. We have religious nutjobs in the United States who think that if you cut off all government safety nets and people have nowhere to go to but to the church they will be doing "God's work". They have joined forces with grifters and capitalists who want to remove all government entitlements. It costs tens of thousands of dollars to have a baby.

You already have NHS. I understand it is not perfect but we are still fighting for medicare for all here and realistically, I will never see it in my lifetime.

I understand my conviction is controversial. Given that the social safety net is crumbling in my country, I cannot in good conscience have children or recommend anyone to have children. Precisely because a lot of (loud) people think "Fuck them, they can pay" for their own children.

[imetatroll]

Declining populations == a crumbling society.

I guess it is up to you whether or not you want to have the joy of a child in your life.

[jll29]

Great project, sorry about the unavailability of cheap price data for the consumer segment.

Professional data is expensive, and one-person companies are not on the radar of data vendors and exchanges, who try to make big contracts e.g. with national banks abd brokerages, who then make that data available to their customers via Web portals. The quality of financial data isn't very good even if you pay a lot.

If your project had been a startup, you would have had to check whether your assumptions apply ahead of building out your front-end and incorporating, ideally: "Can you build it for an acceptable price?" (factoring in the data licensing cost) & "Will they buy it for the price (+ your margin) that you can build it?"

[bonney_io]

Hi -- just want to clarify -- I am NOT the OP, not trying to claim this as my project, simply relating a similar example from my personal life.